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" The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through. "

Octavia E. Butler

See

Way

You

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" Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor. "

" I don't know how much of a market there is for space opera. Just because it's in the movies doesn't mean magazines are buying it. "

" Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. "

" When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away. "

" Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow. "

Octavia E. Butler

Attitude

Story

" How dull it is to have people defining you. "

" Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. "

" I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you. "

" We are a naturally hierarchical species. "

" I'm not pessimistic about much of anything. "

" My characters hope for better lives. "

" Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is. "

Octavia E. Butler

Science

Because

" I don't write about good and evil with this enormous dichotomy. I write about people. I write about people doing the kinds of things that people do. "

" I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. "

" Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another. "

" The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it's because you're telling a story about racism or at least about race. "

" With a disaster like global warming, it's too late to worry about when it's looming except to figure out how to adapt to it. "

Octavia E. Butler

Adapt

Global Warming

" At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child, I was comfortable with adults but shy and awkward with other kids. I was quiet, bookish, and in spite of my size, hopeless at sports. In short, I was different. And even in the earliest grades, I got pounded for it. "

" I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision. "

" Science fiction is not formulaic. "

" Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun. "

Octavia E. Butler

Difficult

People

" Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned. "

" I had a long period of writing what I think of as 'save the world' novels. 'Fledgling' was a chance to play. "

" Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. "

" Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. "

Octavia E. Butler

Inspirational

Create

" I had novels to write, so I wrote them. "

" If vampires were a separate species, and they were into genetic engineering, what would they engineer for? "

" I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure. "

" Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it. "

" I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?' "